The prominence of female figures in Pre-Raphaelite art, and the tension between their sexuality and the religious or mythological subject matter of the artwork reminded me of an exhibition I saw four years ago at Istanbul Modern. From June to September 2011, Istanbul Modern housed Lale Tara’s exhibition titled Innocent Surrogates. Lale Tara used a mannequin surrogate (she calls her ‘doppelganger’) as a model in Innocent Surrogates, and she also used the mannequin in her earlier works. The photos in the exhibition tangled with the theme of duality of emotions. Through the use of costume and setting, Tara aims to create timeless scenes. Tara expresses this by dressing her plastic surrogate in old-fashioned white colored gowns and placing the model in abandoned and decaying spaces. In Innocent Surrogates the model wears a long, heavily draped white gown, and has long disheveled hair –a look that means to emphasize purity and innocence. The model is posed either in prayer or as holding a child, aimed to remind the viewer of Virgin Mary.
Even though Lale Tara constructs scenes with religious connotations that allude to subjects like Virgin and Child, the photos have a tinge of vulgarity in them that potentially disturb the viewer. The use of plastic life-size dolls as models adds a sense of artificiality and crudeness to the photos that is juxtaposed to their refined and timeless setting. Similarly, the framing of the photos do not adhere to rules of photography such as the ‘rule of thirds’, nor do they take into account symmetry or centrality. The costumes and the settings are carefully constructed, but the composition of the photos tend to be off so that the photos look more like products of an amateur photographer who is more interested in capturing the moment. This style reminded me of early Pre-Raphaelite works like Millais’ Isabella (1848-9) that avoided symmetrical compositions praised by the Royal Academy.
The relationship between the subject matter of the work of art and the model’s identity in real life is another issue in Pre-Raphaelite paintings that we discussed in class. La Belle Iseult by William Morris, for example, gained a whole new meaning when we considered Morris’ relationship with the model Jane Burden. In Lale Tara’s work the model’s identity adds a sexual charge to the picture. Even though the setting, the pose, and the costume suggest innocence and piety, the viewer cannot disregard the function of plastic-surrogates in real life. As Prettejohn’s The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites explains, Pre-Raphaelite paintings like Millais’ Mariana or Rosetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini also alluded to human sexuality without necessarily depicting “physical contact” (p.214). Tara's focus on the female figure as an ‘object’ of admiration is also reminiscent of post-1850 Pre-Raphaelite depictions of women- particularly by Rossetti. Lale Tara has taken one step further and has literally objectified herself through the use of a plastic surrogate.
I used to think that the similarity of Lale Tara’s artwork to the Pre-Raphaelite ideals was only a coincidence until I saw Tara’s website, which introduces her photographic version of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia.
For more information on the exhibition:
http://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/press/press-releases/innocent-surrogates_693.html
Asli Akansel
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